


The Angel on your shoulder has a knife behind her back

by maxtothemax



Category: Maximum Ride - James Patterson
Genre: Betrayal, Gen, One Shot, twins au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 02:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20302051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxtothemax/pseuds/maxtothemax
Summary: Damien (Gazzy) has always been jealous of his twin sister, Angel, the golden child. He loves her, though, and he'd never hurt her.But Angel is changing, and it seems Damien is the only one who notices.





	The Angel on your shoulder has a knife behind her back

Damien always knew Angel best. Of course he did; she was his twin, his other half--his _better _half, everyone joked. She was the sweet one, the one who refused to go to bed until she kissed the whole flock goodnight, who cried when she got hurt or when anyone else got hurt. She made everyone smile--could even make Fang smile. She was the only one Damien had never pulled a prank on. He couldn’t stand seeing her upset.

Damien found himself thinking sometimes that he wouldn’t seem so bad if Angel wasn’t around. Jeb used to reassure him that he wasn’t bad, that his former nickname of “Demon” didn’t affect who he was as a person. It was hard to really believe that, though, especially when he was standing next to Angel. On those days when he felt particularly bad, jealousy and resentment swirled within him, even just looking at her--but he always managed to swallow it down. He could never stay mad at her.

The flock was his family, but he still loved Angel best. Everyone else did, too.

-

Looking back, Damien blamed it all on the School, although he couldn’t quite convince himself that was the reason Angel changed. It occurred to him that maybe she never did change. She was always that way; she was just waiting for her chance. Her chance to gain power. It seemed dramatic for a six-year-old, but Damien couldn’t imagine any other reason she’d...

She _was _different, after they got her back from the School. Quiet, at first. The flock doted on her, and slowly she seemed more normal. Only Damien noticed that different look in her eyes. Detachment. Not in a vacant, haunted way, like he’d expected. It was a cold look, like she was above everything, every_one_, else.

She stopped spending as much time with him. No one else noticed, so despite how much it hurt him, he never brought it up.

The rest of the flock _did _notice Angel pushing her boundaries. Max reprimanded her for “influencing” a woman to buy her a stuffed bear. Reprimanded her, but nothing else. Celeste the bear became a permanent fixture in Angel’s arms, like a trophy. Damien couldn’t help thinking if anyone else had some something like that, if he’d stolen so much as a Lego figure or Nudge had stolen the stuffed tiger she’d been fawning over--because that’s what Angel did, she _stole_\--Max would have made them return it, and they’d never hear the end of it. But this was Angel, and Angel could make puppy-dog eyes at anyone and get what she wanted--or, scarier, just _make _someone do what she wanted.

It happened again and again: when she got to keep Total, when she made that FBI agent stop asking her questions, when she ran into the _president _on a field trip and “influenced” him.

She stopped being Damien’s other half.

But Damien still knew Angel best.

-

Over the weeks, Angel had stopped interacting with the flock much. Max worried over it, said she was “withdrawn,” except every time someone asked if Angel was okay, Angel always replied with a cheery, convincing, “I’m fine.” Almost always cheery, but Damien picked up on the occasional irritation in her voice. Occasional, and then more frequent.

One night Damien awoke to the sound of bickering and lay still, pretending to be asleep.

“--don’t know how I didn’t notice, but you can’t just _leave _in the middle of the night, Angel.” It was Iggy’s voice, quiet so he wouldn’t wake the others. He was the one on watch.

“I was safe,” came Angel’s dismissive reply.

“Where did you even _go?” _Iggy demanded.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Iggy scoffed. “’Don’t worry about it’? Angel--”

Her voice stayed perfectly calm. “I’m going back to sleep now. You’re going to forget you ever saw me awake. Okay?”

There was a beat of silence, and then a flat, emotionless version of Iggy’s voice replied, “Okay.”

Damien squeezed his eyes shut, heart pounding, as Angel settled into her spot next to him. His back was turned to her, but he heard her whisper to him through the dark, “No one will ever believe you.”

He didn’t sleep for the rest of the night, and he knew she knew it.

-

Damien thought about telling Max anyway, even though she wouldn’t want to believe Angel did anything bad. He worried over it all morning, _almost _telling her a dozen times.

Then the Erasers came, and he had bigger things to worry about.

The fight was less of a fight than usual--the Erasers didn’t seem to want to cause damage. Or, at least, they’d been ordered not to cause damage. It wasn’t long before Damien felt the prick of a needle in his arm, and leaden exhaustion followed. Before everything went dark, as he lay on the ground barely able to keep his eyes open, he saw Angel. She stood in the midst of the fight, completely unscathed.

She was smiling.

-

The metal grate pressing against Damien’s back told him where he was before he even opened his eyes. He sat up, and his head almost hit the top of the dog crate. Everyone else was either already awake or just waking up. He could see everyone else, each member of the flock in one of the four crates surrounding him. Only four.

Guess who was missing.

Max groaned, trying to hide her panic. “Angel--oh, not again...”

Damien swallowed the lump in his throat. “Max,” he began softly, “I don’t think--”

He cut himself off as the door opened. The flock all turned to see Angel in the doorway, unharmed, smiling as sweetly as ever. Standing behind her was Jeb.

“Angel!” Max gasped, relieved. But Angel didn’t react, and Max frowned uneasily as she took in the unnerving calm on Angel’s face. “...Angel?”

Angel studied the flock in much the same way a child might contemplate a butterfly whose wings they were about to rip off. “What’s the matter? You didn’t expect me to betray you?”

“Betray us? What the hell are you talking about?” Iggy demanded.

Jeb put a hand on Angel’s shoulder. Mere months ago she would have flinched away, but now she didn’t even react. “Angel has agreed to work with us rather than against us,” said Jeb. “I don’t suppose any of you would like to make the sensible choice and join her?”

Nudge already had tears in her eyes. “How could you?”

The look on Angel’s face hardened. “I’m tired of running, and I’m tired of feeling powerless. Plus, you’re all way too easy to manipulate.” The flock stared in enraged silence as she crossed the room, stopping in front of Damien’s crate. She peered down at him with a troubled frown. “Except you.”

Damien sat there with his fists clenched and glared up at her. Blood rushed to his face, but all the scathing remarks swirling around his head died in his throat. All this time, he was _right. _She’d been acting different and no one else wanted to accept it, but he’d noticed from the moment she changed.

Angel was also right: no one would believe him. No one _did _believe him, not until the evidence was staring them in the face.

In the end, Angel straightened up, shrugged, and turned her back on him. The smirk in her voice was audible. “Well, you always knew me best.”

-

The rest of it was a blur of grief and anger and fear. Damien hardly remembered it; it wasn’t important. The only detail that stuck out was that spark of hope that Angel wasn’t really on the whitecoats’ side, that she would come back to them and they could all laugh at the idea that she would ever betray them. The rest of the flock had that hope. Damien didn’t.

The escape happened much the same way it always did: breaking out of the cages, dodging or fighting whitecoats and Erasers, taking flight into the clear, open sky. The only thing different this time was the flock’s reluctance to fly too far, too fast. They kept glancing back. Hoping.

But Damien always knew Angel best, so he kept his eyes forward, knowing his other half was gone for good.


End file.
